LJ wanted to sign Ollie Watkins 2 years ago

[NickJ]

1 hour ago, Harry said:

I mentioned many times under SC’s reign that, as much as he was doing great with the first team, he neglected the future / youth and I said at the time that his spell, successful as it was in the short term, would have a longer term detrimental effect.

That’s simply not true Harry. In  Cotts only full season he established Bryan as a first team regular playing 50 games that season. At the time there were no other academy players knocking on the door. So in what way did Cotts ignore home grown youth? If there were other academy prospects capable of stepping up of course he would have played them, he’d be mad not to. It never has been the job of the first team manager to develop youth, it’s his job to play them when they are ready. There weren’t any others that were at that time. 

Going on to your point about not buying young players from other teams..... it’s easy to say now in hindsight who we should have bought but in fact Cotts did bring in a combination of younger and older players who did pretty well I’d say. You can’t buy everyone. 

Cotts joined us at a time of real danger of being relegated to division 4. That was not the time to be looking to buy players for 2 or 3 years hence. Having saved us he did the incredible the following season. Who knows what he might have done in terms of identifying younger good value players the season after that, had he been properly backed. Although we do know that he was identifying players such as Gray and Maguire, who he’d have bought at bargain prices if he hadn’t had the rug pulled from under him, and of course Kodja a young player that he purchased and on which we made 600% profit.

He also bought Ayling, Smith, Pack and Freeman, all low 20’s at the time and all have been or could be sold at good profit. 

its all very well saying we could have bought Ollie Watkins for £100k, which may or may not be true, but I’d say Cotts sights were aimed higher than that - potential Premier players not Championship. Just the sort of ambition that should be praised and encouraged not critised. 

So I suppose my main point is that Cotts did not ignore youth anymore or any less than any manager before or since to any significant extent. 

Sorry to take a relatively small part of your post about Cotterill but even now I’m still livid that a golden opportunity with City on a roll for a change, was wasted by not properly backing him. 

Lansdowns golden boy Johnson on the other hand has played lip service to the stated policy, buying loads of young players the majority of whom are substandard. 

 

[Northern Red]

6 hours ago, Hampshire Red said:

Obviously still panto season on the forum with such selective samples of players bought, developed, sold on etc. 

There is clearly an excellent recruitment system in place and the development aspect always undisputedly excellent. 

I suppose one could double the list and simply trump the lot with Kodja, £1M in £12,15M out =financial success. Not to mention Bobby, Joe et al

Well done MA, LJ etc

[Lrrr]

34 minutes ago, NickJ said:

That’s simply not true Harry. In  Cotts only full season he established Bryan as a first team regular playing 50 games that season. At the time there were no other academy players knocking on the door. So in what way did Cotts ignore home grown youth? If there were other academy prospects capable of stepping up of course he would have played them, he’d be mad not to. It never has been the job of the first team manager to develop youth, it’s his job to play them when they are ready. There weren’t any others that were at that time. 

Going on to your point about not buying young players from other teams..... it’s easy to say now in hindsight who we should have bought but in fact Cotts did bring in a combination of younger and older players who did pretty well I’d say. You can’t buy everyone. 

Cotts joined us at a time of real danger of being relegated to division 4. That was not the time to be looking to buy players for 2 or 3 years hence. Having saved us he did the incredible the following season. Who knows what he might have done in terms of identifying younger good value players the season after that, had he been properly backed. Although we do know that he was identifying players such as Gray and Maguire, who he’d have bought at bargain prices if he hadn’t had the rug pulled from under him, and of course Kodja a young player that he purchased and on which we made 600% profit.

He also bought Ayling, Smith, Pack and Freeman, all low 20’s at the time and all have been or could be sold at good profit. 

its all very well saying we could have bought Ollie Watkins for £100k, which may or may not be true, but I’d say Cotts sights were aimed higher than that - potential Premier players not Championship. Just the sort of ambition that should be praised and encouraged not critised. 

So I suppose my main point is that Cotts did not ignore youth anymore or any less than any manager before or since to any significant extent. 

Sorry to take a relatively small part of your post about Cotterill but even now I’m still livid that a golden opportunity with City on a roll for a change, was wasted by not properly backing him. 

Lansdowns golden boy Johnson on the other hand has played lip service to the stated policy, buying loads of young players the majority of whom are substandard. 

 

Couple of small things, Pack wasn't signed by Cotts. The other players you mention while young were all ready for first team football when signed by Cotts, I could be wrong but I think Harry was referring to Cotts wanting players who were ready now, rather than picking up players like Watkins who could be ready in 12/18 months cheaply as the post doesn't refer to home grown youth (your post about Bryan) but refers to younger players in general, Cotts also did this by refusing to name any on the bench and name 6 subs instead rather than have an academy product. 

[Harry]

41 minutes ago, NickJ said:

That’s simply not true Harry. In  Cotts only full season he established Bryan as a first team regular playing 50 games that season. At the time there were no other academy players knocking on the door. So in what way did Cotts ignore home grown youth? If there were other academy prospects capable of stepping up of course he would have played them, he’d be mad not to. It never has been the job of the first team manager to develop youth, it’s his job to play them when they are ready. There weren’t any others that were at that time. 

Going on to your point about not buying young players from other teams..... it’s easy to say now in hindsight who we should have bought but in fact Cotts did bring in a combination of younger and older players who did pretty well I’d say. You can’t buy everyone. 

Cotts joined us at a time of real danger of being relegated to division 4. That was not the time to be looking to buy players for 2 or 3 years hence. Having saved us he did the incredible the following season. Who knows what he might have done in terms of identifying younger good value players the season after that, had he been properly backed. Although we do know that he was identifying players such as Gray and Maguire, who he’d have bought at bargain prices if he hadn’t had the rug pulled from under him, and of course Kodja a young player that he purchased and on which we made 600% profit.

He also bought Ayling, Smith, Pack and Freeman, all low 20’s at the time and all have been or could be sold at good profit. 

its all very well saying we could have bought Ollie Watkins for £100k, which may or may not be true, but I’d say Cotts sights were aimed higher than that - potential Premier players not Championship. Just the sort of ambition that should be praised and encouraged not critised. 

So I suppose my main point is that Cotts did not ignore youth anymore or any less than any manager before or since to any significant extent. 

Sorry to take a relatively small part of your post about Cotterill but even now I’m still livid that a golden opportunity with City on a roll for a change, was wasted by not properly backing him. 

Lansdowns golden boy Johnson on the other hand has played lip service to the stated policy, buying loads of young players the majority of whom are substandard. 

 

Hi Nick. Hope you’re well mate. 

I 100% love what SC achieved from the point of view of the first team in that first 18 months of his spell. And I too am peed off about how the Gray/Maguire deals panned out. Most disappointing. 

But part of the managers role is to develop the whole club. He didn’t. Your example re Bryan. It was McInnes who first brought him in, and Sod who realised he needed time in loan at L2 and then brought him in for the 13/14 season. He was a regular before SC took over from SOD. 

True that there wasn’t a host of talent waiting in line at that time so I’d partly agree with you a little there, but I’d argue Morrell should’ve made SC’s squad more than he did. Again SOD had tried to bring him in earlier in the season but SC never looked at him. I will never ever forgive SC for those couple of times he didn’t name a full subs bench - that was astonishing. 

What he absolutely had no interest in was the signing of young players for the future. Seeing we didn’t have much in the academy at that time should mean that we ought to look to strengthen that level 16-19 year olds - those that would be stepping up in 2-3 years time. He wilfully ignored this element of recruitment. Even if the Gray & Maguire transfers paid off, there was no thought to 2 years down the line, who are the next set of first teamers or are we just gonna spend more and more as we go rather than look for bargains to nurture. He was not interested in the slightest. 

So, I agree that from a 1st team point of view, he had a superb 18 months. But behind the scenes, as they say, he took the club 2 years backwards, hence why LJ had to make so many signings when he first arrived, to bulk up the youth sides (Semenyo, Bakinson, Hinds, J Smith etc)  

I’d also not argue with your last paragraph though. The recruitment hasn’t been great under LJ & MA. So he’s gotta do better in that dept as well otherwise the same mistakes will be made (such as missing the Watkins, Bowen’s, Woods’ of this world). 

[Redrascal2]

What is the point of telling us 2 years after the event that he nearly signed Ollie Watkins. 

[NickJ]

6 minutes ago, Harry said:

Hi Nick. Hope you’re well mate. 

Yeah good Harry cheers you too I hope mate. 

First point is also a reply to @hodge about only having 6 subs for a couple of games rather than having an Academy player on the bench. I feel more is made of this than is warranted. For a start there’s no way an academy player would have come on so there’s also no way anyone could say Cotts did anything to jeopardise results in those games. I get that it would have been good experience for a young player, but looking at the bigger picture Cotterill was making a statement about how he was undermined in his transfer targets in the summer; I reckon he thought this would strengthen his hand to be given what he wanted in the next transfer window and if that had succeeded who knows what may have happened. In the event of course it was perceived as just sulking and hence was an error of judgment. But as a negotiating tactic it’s clear what he was trying to do, and given that most of his signings were good ones I wish he’d succeeded. 

So far as your next point that he should have done more to sign 16-19 year olds, apart from the fact that (a) given that his initial task, very successfully achieved, was to save us from Division 4, and (b) in his only full season he performed a minor miracle on very meagre resources compared with what the current manager has got and so I’d say it’s a bit churlish to expect him to also develop a youth policy all within that time frame and (c) so far as I recall there was in any case never any stated policy from above to sign 16-19 year olds,.... my question would be.... Why?

As in, why is it such a good thing to sign young players in the hope they may come good? Why is such a policy better than signing slightly more established players albeit at higher prices who will give more immediate success AND can be sold on at a profit. 

The point is, it isn’t easy to identify these players, if it was all teams would be doing it and we are in competition with dozens of other clubs for these players. Cotterill didn’t do it as he wasn’t given the time to, Johnson has tried to do it and so far has proved to be overall unsuccessful.  

So I’d conclude by saying not as you have that Johnson needs to get better at it, but more to the point he’s clearly no better than average and so if that is the policy he needs to be replaced by somebody who is above average. 

[Lrrr]

30 minutes ago, NickJ said:

in his only full season he performed a minor miracle on very meagre resources compared with what the current manager has got

He was basically given an open chequebook to go and sign a league 1 fantasy team, the figures may not compare to what we spend now but it was a hell of a lot more then other clubs were spending in that league.

[BobBobSuperBob]

16 minutes ago, hodge said:

He was basically given an open chequebook to go and sign a league 1 fantasy team, the figures may not compare to what we spend now but it was a hell of a lot more then other clubs were spending in that league.

I thought he sold Baldock to fund most of it 

Open chequebook ?

Marlon Pack already here  , Derrick Williams , Wilbs , Bryan from academy , Flint , Fielding , Burns already here

 ‘Open cheque book ‘ 

 

Complete Nonsense and coming fromsomeone who can’t see a flaw in the current HC , telling

 

https://www.transfermarkt.com/bristol-city/transfers/verein/698/plus/0?saison_id=2014&pos=&detailpos=&w_s=

[Lrrr]

8 minutes ago, BobBobSuperBob said:

I thought he sold Baldock to fund most of it 

Open chequebook ?

Marlon Pack already here  , Derrick Williams , Wilbs , Bryan from academy , Fielding already here

 ‘Open cheque book ‘ 

Complete Nonsense  

 

Open cheque book 

Don't think we sold Baldock to fund it, just he was wanting to be off to a higher division. Ayling, Little, Smith, Freeman, Wilbraham (will have been big wages dropping from the prem), Agard, Wade Elliott's wages won't have been cheap. Todd Kane, James Tavernier, Matt Smith and George Saville on loan. Compared to our previous spending in league 1 he was basically told to get whatever team he wanted.

[BobBobSuperBob]

2 minutes ago, hodge said:

Don't think we sold Baldock to fund it, just he was wanting to be off to a higher division. Ayling, Little, Smith, Freeman, Wilbraham (will have been big wages dropping from the prem), Agard, Wade Elliott's wages won't have been cheap. Todd Kane, James Tavernier, Matt Smith and George Saville on loan.

Have a look at the fees and tell me he had an open cheque book

[Lrrr]

1 minute ago, BobBobSuperBob said:

Have a look at the fees and tell me he had an open cheque book

I said before, compare it to our previous spending in the league and he was allowed to assemble a league 1 fantasy team, just because the fees in league 1 are comparably lower than the championship doesn't mean it wasn't so. It was smart recruitment yes but we spent a lot more than the previous season in league 1 and a comparable amount to our relegation season from the championship. Pretty sure Freeman and Agard are 2 of our highest fees we've paid in league 1.

[BobBobSuperBob]

8 minutes ago, hodge said:

I said before, compare it to our previous spending in the league and he was allowed to assemble a league 1 fantasy team, just because the fees in league 1 are comparably lower than the championship doesn't mean it wasn't so. It was smart recruitment yes but we spent a lot more than the previous season in league 1 and a comparable amount to our relegation season from the championship. Pretty sure Freeman and Agard are 2 of our highest fees we've paid in league 1.

SC was approximately 1.5 million in credit before and excluding the signings if Smith, Freeman And Ayling 

Do you  think firstly that he spent more than £1.5 million on them ?

Open Cheque book is a complete exaggeration to suit your point / agenda

[Lrrr]

1 minute ago, BobBobSuperBob said:

SC was approximately 1.5 million in credit before and excluding the signings if Smith, Freeman And Ayling 

Do you  think firstly that he spent more than £1.5 million on them ?

Open Cheque book is a complete exaggeration to suit your point / agenda

Don't consider myself to have an agenda, is the £1.5m credit from Baldock? We sold him with about 3 days left in the window so the signings were made before he was off anyway. Agard was £750,000 odd, think Freeman wasn't too much less. Ayling £300,000 odd, Smith is more difficult to judge as part of his fee was exchanging Kelly for him so the fee outlay would be less, funnily enough was actually Johnson alerting City to Smith as Oldham manager at the time. The other factor was Cotterill largely increased the wages of the City squad in that summer as well, so while the transfer fee outlay may not come across as huge the average wage per player bumped up. The phrase open chequebook wasn't used to imply the spending of millions upon millions, just that Lansdown wasn't going to limit him in assembling his side that summer, he had free reign to go get who he wanted.

[BobBobSuperBob]

2 minutes ago, hodge said:

Don't consider myself to have an agenda, is the £1.5m credit from Baldock? We sold him with about 3 days left in the window so the signings were made before he was off anyway. Agard was £750,000 odd, think Freeman wasn't too much less. Ayling £300,000 odd, Smith is more difficult to judge as part of his fee was exchanging Kelly for him so the fee outlay would be less, funnily enough was actually Johnson alerting City to Smith as Oldham manager at the time. The other factor was Cotterill largely increased the wages of the City squad in that summer as well, so while the transfer fee outlay may not come across as huge the average wage per player bumped up. The phrase open chequebook wasn't used to imply the spending of millions upon millions, just that Lansdown wasn't going to limit him in assembling his side that summer, he had free reign to go get who he wanted.

As I said - the figures where disclosed , are on the Transfermarket spreadsheet -

the 1.5 million profit was after the signing of Agard

[Lrrr]

2 minutes ago, BobBobSuperBob said:

As I said - the figures where disclosed , are on the Transfermarket spreadsheet -

the 1.5 million profit was after the signing of Agard

The combined spend that summer will have exceeded Baldock's fee. The other thing about transfermarkt is they make the best guess possible at fee and it will be the highest possible amount, we're down as having received nearly £7.5m for Flint where we know a portion of that is in clauses, so any Baldock clauses with Brighton will have been included in that amount which we potentially didn't receive. As mentioned in the last post the other effect wasn't just transfer fees but the increase in wages that we'll have seen that summer. Think we're going round in circles a bit here, seems we're not going to agree but respect the point your presenting 

[Davefevs]

59 minutes ago, hodge said:

He was basically given an open chequebook to go and sign a league 1 fantasy team, the figures may not compare to what we spend now but it was a hell of a lot more then other clubs were spending in that league.

Hodge, got to massively disagree with you here.....and we’ve been getting on so well today 

As Bob, points out, he pretty much funded that season with the sell of Baldock.

What he did to good effect was use the City ‘Big Fish” club to his advantage in League One together with his and Burt’s eye for a player .  Even Freeman, who was out of contract at Stevenage, signed a new one with them and still signed for us in the end.

He bought young enough players who were not only ready now, but could grow, and in Freeman, Williams, Ayling’s cases, we ultimately sold them too early and for too little......of course there are various reasons why, but those players should never have left for the fees they did.

Back to @NickJ and @Harry - fantastic end to end stuff, edge of the seat stuff for us readers.  You both are making excellent points, and well articulated, informative too.  Thanks.

[Lrrr]

1 minute ago, Davefevs said:

Hodge, got to massively disagree with you here.....and we’ve been getting on so well today 

As Bob, points out, he pretty much funded that season with the sell of Baldock.

What he did to good effect was use the City ‘Big Fish” club to his advantage in League One together with his and Burt’s eye for a player .  Even Freeman, who was out of contract at Stevenage, signed a new one with them and still signed for us in the end.

He bought young enough players who were not only ready now, but could grow, and in Freeman, Williams, Ayling’s cases, we ultimately sold them too early and for too little......of course there are various reasons why, but those players should never have left for the fees they did.

Back to @NickJ and @Harry - fantastic end to end stuff, edge of the seat stuff for us readers.  You both are making excellent points, and well articulated, informative too.  Thanks.

Point of view would be unless we knew we were selling Baldock at the start of the summer its hard to say we were covering the signings with him. Why wait so long after the season started (and play him in those games) if we were just planning on selling him anyway? We'd made our signings and then sold Baldock when an offer came at the end of the window, from the time it seemed we were happy keeping him for the season.

[Davefevs]

@hodge and @BobBobSuperBob good debate too.

I think the tiger thing I would throw in Cotts favour is that although wages were higher per player undoubtedly. He worked with a small squad, there was no bloat.  Karl Robinson at MKD used to moan like f€£k about our budget, but he had over 30 first team players in his squad, eating away at the income;wages ratio of League One’s FFP.  

A tually a second thing, our income was reduced because of the East End knocked down, so we were constrained by natch day income too.

We battered that league, battered them 

[Davefevs]

6 minutes ago, hodge said:

Point of view would be unless we knew we were selling Baldock at the start of the summer its hard to say we were covering the signings with him. Why wait so long after the season started (and play him in those games) if we were just planning on selling him anyway? We'd made our signings and then sold Baldock when an offer came at the end of the window, from the time it seemed we were happy keeping him for the season.

I think the club knew it was gonna happen, it had been rumoured all summer, and when it did, they’d lined up Agard.

I don’t think subsequent loans of Kane, Smith, Saville, Tavernier (nor Agard obviously) would’ve possible without the sale of Baldock.

[NickJ]

7 hours ago, hodge said:

He was basically given an open chequebook to go and sign a league 1 fantasy team, the figures may not compare to what we spend now but it was a hell of a lot more then other clubs were spending in that league.

That is simply not true, the club accounts for the season will confirm that. What he did do was identified the best available player in certain positions from league one and acquired them for what proved to be bargain prices. This was a relatively small number of signings. As @Davefevs says, Cotterill had an extremely small squad, thereby keeping the wage bill down.

I'd ask you this. How many of Cotterill's signings were expensive basket cases. The answer is none, almost every player that Cotterill purchased has gone on to be, or could be, sold at significant profit.

Compare with Johnson, how many of his have been expensive basket cases. No need to list them its been done several times before, a very long list.

Cotterill's "Signings P&L" would smash Johnsons.

 

[Trueredsupporter]

7 hours ago, hodge said:

I said before, compare it to our previous spending in the league and he was allowed to assemble a league 1 fantasy team, just because the fees in league 1 are comparably lower than the championship doesn't mean it wasn't so. It was smart recruitment yes 

It was very smart spending with limits and no open cheque book.

[alexukhc]

Could’ve signed Lingard tho

[INCRED]

On 26/12/2018 at 23:38, Harry said:

Not sure I’d agree to be honest. We have certainly purchased a few players of age 20 and under but none have been a “taking a chance” effort, ie like £100k for Watkins before he was on everyone’s radar, or £50k for Bowen, or £250k for Ryan Woods, the list can go on. If anything, looking at the young players we’ve signed below, we’re probably over-paying, whilst arguably the most successful of these was on a free! 

Walsh - £1m - Everton. 

Eliasson - £1.8m - Norkopping

Moore - £1.6m - Lens

Engvall - £1.4m - Gothenburg

O’Dowda - £1m - Oxford

Brownhill - Free - Preston

Di Girolamo - Free - Sheff Utd

Maybe I should have been more precise, expensive chances!!